Evan Wasserman shuffled in on broken, bloody feet. His eyes were nearly swollen shut. Gore streaked his face and caked his hair. One arm hung at an odd angle. The other held a gun. It looked like half his hand had melted into the grip.
He peered at her through puffy lids, a puzzled expression on his face. “Jean, I—I don’t understand. We agreed to end this ourselves. Why are there men downstairs?”
“Evan,” she said, pleading. “Don’t.”
“It was supposed to be done quietly,” he muttered, almost to himself. “Nobody would have to know. This place would be safe, the children…” He looked up at her. “The children!” he screamed, bloody saliva spraying from his mouth. “Look what you’ve done, bringing her up here. The building is falling apart. My grandfather—”
“You don’t know a goddamned thing,” she hissed at him, baring her teeth. “You sick, disgusting man. I have everything under control. Get out of here!”
Wasserman shook his head. His features clenched, tears wetting the blood at the corner of his eyes. He raised the gun. “I won’t let it happen again,” he said. “I—”
Shelley sensed movement more than she saw it, and suddenly Jeffrey was barreling into Wasserman from the shadows, hitting him low and in the side like a linebacker into a running back. The blow carried Wasserman up and into the air as the gun barked and something whined off into the darkness, and then they both hit the floor, slid, and rolled over into the wall.
Shelley turned back to the girl. Something was wrong. The room temperature had plummeted, and yet she felt uncomfortably warm. She felt as if someone had doused her with kerosene and was about to light a match.
The girl had come several steps into the room now. Her eyes were glassy in the faint light, reflecting something red that grew brighter by the second.
The air seemed to shimmer. Shelley looked around her at the black walls, the waveproof walls that were now glowing orange red, that were rippling like water running down rock, and at the same time she could hardly see through the cloud of steam from her breath. Ice crystals formed in midair and dropped like tiny diamonds at her feet, only to hiss and boil away into mist.
It was all wrong, she shouldn’t be this strong, even with the drugs they had given her….
Shelley’s skin was burning, melting off her bones.
She shrieked, but the sound was lost in the unforming of her lips and the slow slide of flesh from her jaw.
To study the self is to forget the self and to forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things.
In her moment of despair, she clung to this elusive goal, even as her brain boiled inside its bone shell. She still had not found the ten thousand things. Or perhaps she had; perhaps losing yourself meant finding infinity, everything and nothing at once, and the ten thousand things were a metaphor for that boundless stretch of space where time meant nothing, life did not exist, and the world had dissolved into a great, black emptiness.
Her last thoughts were meant for a Christian God, whom she had denounced years ago, and her prayers were reduced to childhood rhymes. Everything was wrong, the world was coming to an end.
Jesus, save me.
Then there was only pain.
—37—
Jess Chambers, crouched just inside the open door, looked up in time to see the final release of Dr. Jean Shelley.
She had seen Evan Wasserman come in, hardly believing her eyes; she thought she had watched him die. Then, even more unbelievingly, Jeffrey had done his heroic part. Even now they were still struggling with each other, but Jeffrey had gotten his arms under the doctor’s armpits and locked his hands behind Wasserman’s head.
The floor had become slick as she gained her feet again and held herself upright against the door frame. It was difficult to see now through the odd mix of heat and cold, as the two met like miniature weather fronts and turned the moisture in the air to steam and then instantly to ice.
Shelley stood a few feet beyond Sarah’s tiny form. Her arms were still outstretched, as if in prayer, but her flesh hung off them like uncooked bread dough. Her shoes had dissolved into the floor, and she stood like a rooted human tree as the walls gave off waves of glittering heat. Jess could feel it burning her skin like the sun.
Within the dripping oval of her face, Shelley’s lips moved. Something popped, and her skin began to smolder. Smoke poured from her hair, her nose and mouth, rose off her body like early-morning steam from a lake.
Then she burst into flame.
Another door flew open and shouts came from the other end of the room. Sarah turned her head, and Jess felt the electrical charge push past her like a breath of wind. The two guards who had begun to draw their weapons now danced in place like two puppets on a string, their limbs jerking and their hair standing on end. Ronald Gee stood just behind them in the doorway, sparks running from his fingers. His clothes had already begun to burn.
The heat and smoke were swiftly overwhelming everything else. Jess found it hard to breathe, and she pulled her shirt up over her nose and mouth.
Sarah was moving. Jess’s eyes watered as she tried to watch the girl cross the room, but she had to turn away to catch her breath, and when she turned back, Sarah was gone.
Jess stumbled out into the crackling, open space. Now that Sarah had left, the air had returned to its normal state, and only the fire was left to burn. Somehow it had gotten underneath and in the walls, and up into the roof. In another few minutes this part of the building would be a raging inferno.
The heat was almost unbearable. It was like standing on melting asphalt at twelve noon in the middle of a desert, waves of sickly heat washing over her from all directions.
She shielded her face and ran past the two guards and Gee, who were now sprawled motionless and smoldering across the floor, and out into the hallway. A little easier to breathe out here. Something cracked and shook the floor beneath her feet. She took a gulp of cooler air, coughed up deep hacking mouthfuls of soot and phlegm, and saw the open elevator shaft yawning like a great black mouth. She headed for the stairs.
One floor down, Jess ran past the playroom. Empty, thank God, they had gotten the children out. She continued to the front entrance.
The doors were gone. A ragged hole of concrete and steel took their place. She looked through, out along the path of destruction.
The man in the blue suit was doing a dance on the front steps, his white hair standing on end, his eyes bulging. Smoke curled from within the sleeves of his jacket. His skin crackled. He held a rigid, frozen pose, and then dropped as if suddenly released, rolled limply down the last two steps, and lay still.
Sarah turned on the lawn and faced the street. There were black cars out there, and vans too. The van doors slid open and men in military attack gear jumped out.
Somewhere overhead, Jess heard the chattering thump of a helicopter. She started to move down the steps, hesitated. This was going to get nasty. If Sarah was distracted, they were both dead. She knew that with absolute certainty. It had all gone too far for anything else.
I don’t think they’re going to just let us walk away. But there is another way out.
Her own words, spoken just minutes ago. More true right now than ever before.
It’s time to let it all loose, don’t hold back.
McDwyer looked out over the scene as they came in low over the brush. A few moments ago they had swooped past a series of abandoned buildings, and he thought about landing there and planning a better approach through the ground cover, but decided it would take too long.